■/O 



PRICE TEN CENTS. . /* 

. =— U^ 




• . ♦ 

MISTER FOLIA FRUCTUS. "-£<'" "< a MbtU oj J. A. Garfield. 



MAXIMS 



OF 




MES ABRAM GARFIELD 



GENERAL, PATRIOTIC, POLITICAL. 



COMPILED BY 

WILLIAM RALSTON BALCH. 



PHILADELPHIA' 

. COPYRIGHT, « 

l88o. 



INTER FOLIA FRUCTUS."— Library Motto of J. A. Garfield. 



MAXIMS 



OF 



James Abram Garfield. 



GENERAL, PATRIOTIC, POLITICAL. 



COMPILED BY 



WILLIAM RALSTON BALCH 

i 



PHILADELPHIA 

COPYRIGHT, 

1880. 



' 



15 



PREFACE 



/CONGRESSIONAL literature receives but little attention in this 
^"^ country. Too much of its bulk is but the saw-dust of debate, 
the dry chips that some dreary orator strikes from the block of a tire- 
some subject. In consequence, much that is valuable, powerful, and 
eloquent of national life, appearing in speeches that are the exception 
to the rule, is missed by the vast majority. 

Thousands will probably read with surprise, not being aware of 
their existence, the clever, philosophical, manly and patriotic maxims 
that are printed in the following pages, taken entirely from the public 
utterances of the Republican nominee for the Presidency. It is, indeed, 
remarkable how thickly his speeches — which are never dry — are 
studded with jewels of utterance. 

The compiler has made no attempt at elaborate classification. 
The maxims have been arranged so as to bear a certain relation of 
subject, and such notes as are necessary have been added. The title 
of " Maxims " is entirely the selection of the Compiler. 

The beauty, the wit and wisdom of much that General Garfield 
has uttered cannot but win its way to an abiding place in the hearts of 
the American people, and serve to bring them into closer relation with 
the admirable sentiments of the man who has been nominated to the 
highest post of honor in this Republic. 

William Ralston Balch. 

Philadelphia, August 2$tk, 1880. 

61503 

'05 






MAXIMS OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



MAX IMS- GENERAL. 

I would rather be beaten in Right than succeed in Wrong. 



I feel a profounder reverence for a Boy than for a Man. I never 
meet a racked Bov in the street without feeling that I may owe him a 
salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under 
his coat. 



Luck is an ignis-fatuus. You may follow it to Ruin, but never to 
Success. 



Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify ; but nine times out of 
ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed 
overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my 
acquaintance I never knew a Man to be drowned who was worth the 



saving. 



There are times in the history of men and nations, when they 
stand so near the veil that separates Mortals and Immortals, Time from 
Eternity, and Men from their God, that they can almost hear their 
breathings and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite. 

— Oration on Abraham Lincoln. 



The source of our Sovereign's Supreme danger, the point where 
his life is vulnerable, is at the.-. ballot-box where his will is declared; 
and if he cannot stand by that cradle of our Sovereign's heir-apparent 
and protect it to the uttermost against all assassins and assailants, we 
have no Government and no Safety for the future. 

I 



2 

For the noblest Man that lives there still remains a Conflict. 



The principles of Ethics have not changed by the lapse of years. 



Growth is better than Permanence, and permanent growth is 
better than all. 



It is no honor or profit merely to appear in the arena. The 
Wreath is for those who contend. 



We are never without a Man or a Motto to shout over. 



After the battle of Arms comes the battle of History. 



There is a fellowship among the Virtues by which one great, 
generous passion stimulates another. 



The privilege of being a Young Man is a great privilege, and the 
privilege of growing up to be an independent Man in middle life is a 
greater. — Speech at Peekskill, Aug. #th, 1880. 



No Man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power 
that strikes up from a thousand minds that acts upon him and makes 
the speech. 



We hold reunions, not for the Dead, for there is nothing in all the 
earth that you and I can do for the Dead. They are past our help 
and past our praise. We can add to them no glory, we can give to 
them no immortality. They do not need us, but forever and forever 
more we need them. — Speech at Geneva, Aug. 3d, 1880. 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCE. 

Nothing is more uncertain than the result of any one throw ; 
few things more certain than the result of many throws. 



If the power to do hard work is not Talent, it is the best possible 
substitute for it. 



Occasion maybe the bugle-call that summons an army to battle, 
but the blast of a bugle can never make Soldiers or win Victories. 



Things don't turn up in this World until somebody turns them up. 



We cannot study Nature profoundly without bringing ourselves 
into communion with the Spirit of Art, which pervades and fills the 
Universe. 



If there be one thing upon this Earth that mankind love and 
admire better than another, it is a brave Man— it is a man who dares 
to look the Devil in the face and tell him he is a Devil. 



It is one of the precious mysteries of Sorrow that it finds solace 
in unselfish Thought. 



TRUE ART 

True art is but the anti-type of Nature — the embodiment of dis- 
covered Beauty in utility. 

CHARACTER. 

Every character is the joint product of Nature and Nurture. 

Not a man of Iron, but of live Oak. — Oration on Geo. H. Thomas. 

His character was as grand and simple as a colossal Pillar of 
chiseled Granite. *&«/• 

His power as a Commander was developed slowly and silently; 
not like a volcanic Land lifted from the Sea by sudden and violent up- 
heaval, but rather like a Coral Island, where each Increment is a 
growth — an act of Life and Work. — Ibid. 



After her return from Oberlin, she paid more attention to the 
Mint, Anise and Cummin of life. — Oration on Miss Booth. 

He was one of the few great Rulers whose wisdom increased with 
his power, and whose spirit grew gentler and tenderer as his Triumphs 
were multiplied. — Oration on Abraham Lincoln. 

The Problems to be solved in the study of human life and char- 
acter are these : Given the Character of a Man and the conditions of 
life around him, what will be his Career? Or, given his Character and 
Career, of what kind were his Surroundings? The relation of these 
three factors to each other is severely logical. From them is de- 
duced all genuine History. Character is the chief element, for it is 
both a Result and a Cause — a result of Influences and a cause of Results. 



POWER. 

Power exhibits itself under two distinct forms — Strength and 
Force — each possessing peculiar qualities and each perfect in its own 
sphere. Strength is typified by the Oak, the Rock, the Mountain. 
Force embodies itself in the Cataract, the Tempest, the Thunderbolt. 



GREAT POWERS. 

The possession of great Powers no doubt carries with it a contempt 
for mere external Show. 



GREAT MEN. 

As a giant Tree absorbs all the elements of growth within its reach 
and leaves only a sickly Vegetation in its shadow, so do towering great 
Men absorb all the strength and glory of their surroundings and leave 
a dearth of Greatness for a whole generation. 

A Monopoly of popular Honors is as much of a Tyranny as a 
Monopoly of Wealth. 

It has been fortunate that most of our greatest Men have left no 
descendants to shine in the borrowed lustre of a great name. 



SUCCESS IN LITE. 

To a young Man who has in himself the magnificent possibilities 
of life it is not fitting that he should be permanently commanded ; he 



should be a Commander. You must not continue to be the employed. 
You must be an employer! You must be promoted from the ranks 
to a command. There is something, young Man, which you can 
command — go and find it and command it. Do not, I beseech you, 
be content to enter upon any Business which does not require and 
compel constant intellectual Growth. 

In order to have any success in life, or any worthy success, you 
must resolve to carry into your work a fullness of Knowledge — not 
merely a Sufficiency, but more than a Sufficiency. 

Be fit for more than the Thing you are now doing. 

If you are not too large for the Place you are too small for it. 

Young Men talk of trusting to the Spur of the Occasion. That 
trust is vain. Occasions cannot make Spurs. If you expect to wear 
Spurs you must win them. If you wish to use them you must buckle 
them to your own heels before you go into the Fight. 



EDUCATION. 

It is to me a perpetual wonder that any Child's love of Knowledge 
survives the outrages of the School-house. 

That man will be a benefactor of his race who shall teach us how 
to manage rightly the first years of a Child's education. 

One half of the time which is now almost wholly wasted, in 
district schools, on English grammar attempted at too early an age, 
would be sufficient to teach our Children to love the Republic and to 
become its loyal and life-long Supporters. 

The old necessities have passed away. We now have strong and 
noble living Languages; rich in Literature, replete with high and earnest 
thought, ihe language of Science, Religion and Liberty, and yet we bid 
our Children feed their spirits on the life of the dead ages, instead of the 
inspiring life and vigor of our own times. I do not object to Classical 
learning — far from it — but I would not have it exclude the living present. 

Greek is perhaps the most perfect instrument of Thought ever 
invented by Man, and its Literature has never been equaled in purity of 
style and boldness of expression. 






The Graduate would blush were he to mistake the place of a 
Greek accent, or put the ictus on the second syllable of Eolus; but 
the whole circle of the "liberalium artium" so pompously referred to 
in his Diploma of graduation, may not have taught him whether the 
jejunum is a bone or the humerus an intestine. 

The Student should study himself, his relation to Society, to 
Nature and to Art — and above all, in all, and though all these, he should 
study the relations of Himself, Society, Nature and Art to God the 
Author of them all. 



Great Ideas travel slowly and for a time noiselessly, as the' gods 
whose Feet were shod with wool. 



LITERATURE. 

What the Arts are to the world of matter, Literature is to the 
world of mind. 

Many books we can read in a railroad car and feel a harmony 
between the rushing of the train and the haste of the Author, but to 
enjoy standard works we need the quiet of a winter evening — an easy 
chair before a cheerful fire, and all the equanimity of spirits we can 
command. 

He who would understand the real spirit of Literature should not 
select authors of any one period alone, but rather go to the fountain- 
head, and trace the little rill as it courses along down the ages, 
broadening and deepening into the great ocean of Thought which the 
Men of the present are exploring. 

The true literary Man is no mere gleaner, following in the rear 
and gathering up the fragments of the world's thought; but he goes 
down deep into the heart of Humanity, watches its throbbings, ana- 
lyzes the forces at work there; traces out, with prophetic foresight, 
their tendencies, and thus, standing out far beyond his Age, holds up 
the picture of what it is and is to be. 

It is indeed an uninviting task to bubble up sentiment and 
elaborate thought in obedience to corporate laws, and not infre- 
quently these Children of the Brain, when paraded before the proper 
authorities, show by their meagre proportions that they have not 
been nourished by the genial warmth of a willing heart. 



HISTORY. 

History is but the unrolled scroll of Prophecy. 

The developments of statistics are causing History to be rewritten. 

The world's history is a Divine Poem of which the history of 
every Nation is a canto and every Man a word. Its strains have been 
pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been 
mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the 
Christian, Philosopher and Historian — the humble listener — there has 
been a Divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope 
and halcyon days to come. 

The lesson of History is rarely learned by the actors themselves. 

Theologians in all ages have looked out admiringly upon the 
material universe and from its inanimate existences demonstrated the 
Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God ; but we know of no one who 
has demonstrated the same attributes from the History of the human 
race. 

All along the dim centuries are gleaming lamps which mind has 
lighted, and these are revealing to Him (the historian) the path which 
Humanity has trod. 

Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and 
abuses that are grown in darkness disappear like owls and bats before 
the light of Day. 



TRUTH. 

Truth is so related and corelated that no department of her 
realm is wholly isolated. 

Truth is the food of the human Spirit which could not grow in 
its majestic proportions without clearer and more truthful views of 
God and His universe. 



LAW AND ORDER. 

Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the 
universe, that the world is a Cosmos, not a chaos. 

The assertion of the reign of Law has been stubbornly resisted at 
every step. The divinities of Heathen superstition still linger in one 
form or another in the faith of the ignorant, and even many intelligent 



8 

Men shrink from the contemplation of one Supreme Will acting regu- 
larly, not fatuitously, through laws beautiful and simple, rather than 
through a fitful and capricious Providence. 



FREEDOM AND LIBERTY. 

Liberty can be safe only when Suffrage is illuminated by education. 

For a man to feel that every impulse for laudable ambition must 
be strangled at its birth, that like fabled Pmceladus he has been rived 
by the thunder-bolt of Power and crushed beneath the mountain of 
its strength is more than this human nature of ours can endure. 
What wonder then that ever and anon, when Freedom turns the 
weary side — the fires of devouring Vengeance burst forth and shake 
the fabrics of the old world, till Tyrants chatter on their gilded thrones 
in idiotic terror. At such moments, Freedom may seem to have 
triumphed there, but when the fury of the tempest is past, she lies 
bleeding — Samson-like — beneath the ruin she has wrought. 

Eouality — the informing soul of Freedom ! 

English liberty to-day rests not so much on the government as 
on those rights which the people have wrested from the government. 
The rights of the Englishman outnumber the rights of the English- 
man's king. 

Poetry is the language of Freedom. 



MEMORY. 

When the rough battle of the day is done 
And evening's peace falls gently on my heart, 
I bound away across the noisv years, 
Unto the utmost verge of Memory's land, 
"Where earth and sky in dreamy distance meet 
And Memory dim with dark oblivion joins. 
Where woke the first remembered sounds that fell 
Upon the ear in childhood's early morn. 
— From a Poem on Memory contributed tj the Williams Quarterly. 

What poet's tuneful lyre has ever sung, 

Or delicatest pencil e'er portrayed 

The enchanted shadow}' land where memory dwells ? — Ibid. 

The path of youth winds down through many a vale 

And on the brink of many a dread abyss, 

From out whose darkness comes no ray of light, 

Save that a phantom dances o'er the gulf, 

And beckons toward the verge. — Ibid. 



SCIENCE. 

The scientific spirit has cast out the Demons and presented us 
with Nature, clothed in her right mind and living under the reign of 
law. It has given us for the sorceries of the Alchemist, the beautiful 
laws of chemistry ; for the dreams of the Astrologer, the sublime 
truths of astronomy ; for the wild visions of Cosmogony, the monu- 
mental records of geology ; for the anarchy of Diabolism, the laws of God. 

We no longer attribute the untimely death of infants to the sin 
of Adam, but to bad nursing and ignorance. 



RAILROADS. 

The American people have done much for the Locomotive, and 
the Locomotive has done much for them. 

Imagine if you can what would happen if to-morrow morning 
the railway locomotive and its corollary, the telegraph, were blotted 
from the earth. To what humble proportions Mankind would be 
compelled to scale down the great enterprises they are now pushing 
forward with such ease ! 

The national Constitution and the Constitutions of most of the 
States were formed before the locomotive existed, and, of course, no 
special provisions were made for its control. Are our institutions 
strong enough to stand the shock and strain of this new Force ? I 
fail to believe that the genius and energy that have developed these 
new and tremendous forces will fail to make them not the masters, 
but the faithful servants of society. 



The granite Hills are not so changeless and abiding as the rest- 
less sea. 



io 



MAXIMS-PATRIOTIC 



I love to believe that no heroic sacrifice is ever lost, that the 
characters of men are moulded and inspired by what their fathers 
have done ; that, treasured up in American souls are all the uncon- 
scious influences of the great deeds of the Anglo-Saxon race, from 
Agincourt to Bunker Hill. 

Eternity alone will reveal to the human race its debt of gratitude 
to the peerless and immortal name of Washington. 

I doubt if any man equalled Samuel Adams in formulating and 
uttering the fierce, clear and inexorable logic of the Revolution. 

The last eight decades has witnessed an Empire spring up in the 
full panoply of lusty life, from a trackless wilderness. 

In their struggle with the forces of Nature, the ability to labor 
was the richest patrimony of the Colonist. 

The great doctrines of the Declaration germinated in the hearts 
of our fathers, and were developed under the new influences of this 
wilderness world ; by the same subtle mystery which brings forth the 
rose from the eerm of the rose-tree. Unconsciouslv to themselves 
the great Truths were growing under the new conditions, until, like 
the century-plant, they blossomed into the matchless beauty of the 
Declaration of Independence, whose fruitage increased, and increasing 
we enjoy to-day. 

Peace, liberty and personal security are blessings as common and 
universal as sunshine and showers and fruitful seasons ; and all sprang 
from a single source — the principle declared in the Pilgrim covenant 
of 1620 — that all owed due submission and obedience to the lawfully 



1 1 

expressed will of the Majority. This is not one of the doctrines of 
our political system, it is the System itself. It is in our political 
firmament, in which all other truths are set, as stars in heaven. It is 
the encasing air, the breath of the Nation's life. 

We should do nothing inconsistent with the spirit and genius of 
our Institutions. We should do nothing for revenge, but everything 
for security: nothing for the past; everything for the present and 
the future. 

Shall we regard with indifference the great inheritance which 
cost our sires their blood because we find in their gift an admixture 
of imperfection and evil? Surely there is Good enough, in the con- 
templation of which every patriotic heart may say, " God bless my 
own, my native Land." 

Throughout the whole web of National existence we trace the 
golden thread of human progress toward a higher and better estate. 

Heroes did not make our liberties, they but reflected and illus- 
trated them. 

To all our means of culture is added that powerful incentive to 
personal ambition which springs from the genius of our Government. 
The pathway to honorable distinction lies open to all. No post of 
honor so high but the poorest Boy may hope to reach it. It is the pride 
of every American, that many cherished names, at whose mention our 
hearts beat with a quicker bound, were worn by the sons of poverty, 
who conquered obscurity and became fixed stars in our firmament. 

Individuals may wear for a time the glory of our institutions, 
but they carry it not to the grave with them. Like rain-drops from 
Heaven, they may pass through the circle of the shining bow and add 
to its lustre, but when they have sunk in the Earth again, the proud 
arch still spans the sky and shines gloriously on. 

The best thing in Patterson, and the best thing in this Republic 
next to Liberty, is the Labor of our People. 

— Speech at Patterson, Aug. yth, 1SS0. 

I would rather be defeated than make Capital out of my Religion. 

— Remark at Chatauq?ia, Aug. 8th, 1880. 

It is well to know the history of those magnificent nations whose 
origin is lost in fable, and whose epitaphs were written a thousand 



12 

years ago — but if we cannot know both, it is far better to study the 
history of our own Nation, whose origin we can trace to the freest and 
noblest aspirations of the human heart. 

The Life and Light of a nation are inseparable. 

After all territory is but the body of a nation. The people who 
inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. In them 
dwells its hope of immortality. Among them, if anywhere, are to be 
found its chief elements of destruction. 

We confront the dangers of Suffrage by the blessings of universal 
education. 

There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction de- 
termine the condition of a nation — the forces of Repression and Ex- 
pression. The one acts from without, limits, curbs, restrains. The 
other acts from within ; expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms, 
statutory limitations, conservative customs, belong to the first. The 
free play of individual life, opinion and action, belong to the second. 
If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise conservation 
and corelation of both, a nation may enjoy the double blessing of 
progress and permanence. 

It matters little what maybe the forms of National institutions, if 
the life, freedom and growth of society are secured. 

There is no horizontal Stratification of society in this country 
like the rocks in the earth, that hold one class down below forever- 
more, and let another come to the surface to stay there forever. Our 
Stratification is like the ocean, where every individual drop is free to 
move, and where from the sternest depths of the mighty deep any 
drop may come up to glitter on the highest wave that rolls. 

The Union and the Congress must share the same fate. They 
must rise or fall together. 

We should enlist both the pride and the selfishness of the people 
on the side of good order and peace. 

We legislate for the people of the United States, not for the whole 
world; and it is our glory that the American laborer is more intelli- 
gent and better paid than his foreign competitor. 



13 

There is deep down in the hearts of the American people a 
strong and abiding love of our Country which no surface storms of 
passion can ever shake. 

The intelligence and national spirit of our People exhibit their 
capacity for dealing with difficult problems. Those who saw the ter- 
rible elements of destruction that burst upon us twelve years ago in 
the fury of the Civil War would have been called dreamers and enthu- 
siasts had they predicted that 1873 would witness the conflict ended > 
its cause annihilated, the bitterness and hatred it occasioned nearly 
gone, and the Nation with union and unity restored, smiling again over 
half a million soldiers' graves. 

The Atlantic is still the great historic sea. Even in its sunken 
wrecks might be read the record of modern nations. Who shall say 
that the Pacific will not yet become the great historic sea of the future 
— the vast amphitheatre around which shall sit in majesty and power 
the two Americas, Asia, Africa and the chief colonies of Europe. God 
forbid that the waters of our National life should ever settle to the 
dead level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death, 
the ocean grave of individual liberty. 

I look forward with joy and hope to the day when our brave 
People, one in heart, one in their aspirations for freedom and peace, 
shall see that the darkness through which we have traveled was but a 
part of that stern but beneficent discipline by which the great Disposer 
of events has been leading us on to a higher and nobler national life. 

The hope of our National perpetuity rests upon that perfect indi- 
vidual Freedom which shall forever keep up the circuit of perpetual 
change. 

Finally our great hope for the Future — our great safeguard 
against danger — is to be found in the general and thorough education 
of our people and in the virtue which accompanies such education. 



H 



MAXIMS-POLITICAL 



The germ of our political institutions, the primary cell from 
which they were evolved was in the New England town, and the 
vital force, the informing soul of the town, was the Town Meeting, 
which for all local concerns was king, lords and commons in all. 



In a word our National safety demands that the fountains of 
political power shall be made pure by Intelligence and kept pure 
by Vigilance. 

It is as much the duty of all good men to protect and defend the 
reputation of worthy public Servants as to detect public rascals. 



The prosperity which is made possible in the South, by its great 
advantages of soil and climate, will never be realized until every voter 
can freely and safely support any party he pleases. 



PARTIES. 

Political parties like poets are born not made. No act of 
political mechanics however wise can manufacture to order and make 
a platform and put a party on it which will live and flourish. 

The Flowers that bloom over the garden wall of party politics 
are the sweetest and most fragrant that bloom in the gardens of this world. 



15 

Whatever opinions we may now entertain of the Federalists as 
a party it is unquestionably true that we are indebted to them for the 
strong points of the Constitution and for the stable government they 
founded and strengthened during the administration of Washington 
and Adams. 

W^hile it is true that no party can stand upon its past record 
alone, yet it is also true that its past shows the spirit and character of 
the organization, and enables us to judge what it will probably do in 
the future. 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 

Twenty-five years ago this republic was wearing a triple chain 
of bondage. Long familiarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men 
had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people. The 
doctrine of State Sovereignty had shocked and weakened the nobler 
and most beneficent powers of the National Government, and the 
grasping power of slavery was seizing the original territories of the 
West and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that 
crisis the Republican Party was born. It drew its first inspiration 
from the fire of liberty which God has lighted in every man's heart, 
and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly 
extinguish. The Republican Party came to deliver and save the 
republic. It entered the arena when the beleagured and assailed ter- 
ritories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred 
circle of liberty, which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross. 
It made them free forever. — Speech nominating Sherman. 

The Republican Party gave to the country a currency as National 
as its flag, based upon the sacred faith of the people. — Ibid. 

It confronted a rebellion of unexampled magnitude, with slavery 
behind it, and, under God, fought the final battle of liberty. — Ibid. 

This coming fight is our Thermopylae. We are standing upon a 
narrow isthmus. If our Spartan hosts are united we can withstand 
all the Persians that the Xerxes of the Democracy can bring against us. 
Let us hold our ground this one year, for the stars in their courses 
fight for us in the future. — Ibid. 

The Republicans insist that the United States is a nation with am- 
ple power of self-preservation ; that its Constitution, and laws made in 



i6 

pursuance thereof, are the supreme law of the land, that the right of 
the nation to determine the method by which its own legislature shall 
be created cannot be surrendered without abdicating one of the fun- 
damental powers of the Government ; that the national laws relating 
to the election of representatives in Congress shall never be violated 
nor evaded, that every elector shall be permitted freely and without 
intimidation to cast his lawful ballot at such election and have it 
honestly counted, and that the potency of his vote shall not be de- 
stroyed by the fraudulent vote of any other person. -Letter of Acceptance- 

Another thing we will remember, we will remember our allies 
who fought with us. Soon after the great struggle began, we looked 
behind the army of white rebels and saw 4,000,000 of black people 
condemned to toil as slaves for our enemies ; and we found that the 
hearts of these 4,000,000 were God-inspired with the spirit of liberty 
and that they were our friends. We have seen white men betray the 
flag, but in all that long, dreary war we never saw a traitor in a black 
skin. Our prisoners escaping from the starvation of prisons, fleeing 
to our lines by the light of the North Star, never feared to enter the 
black man's cabin and ask for bread. In all that period of suffering 
and danger no Union soldier was ever betrayed by a black man or 
woman. And now that we have made them free, so long as we live 
we will stand by these black allies. We will stand by them until the 
sun of liberty, fixed in the firmament of our Constitution, shall shine 
with equal ray upon every man, black or white, throughout the 
Union. — Speech in New York, Aug. 6, 18S0. 

The Democratic and Republican parties are examples of a genu- 
ine and natural method of organizing political parties. The Demo- 
cratic party in its earlier and better days represented the genuine 
aspirations and grand ideas of the American people, and no man can 
say it was ever manufactured at any particular time by any particular 
set of men. The Republican party also was a growth springing from 
the hostility of the American people to Slavery, and they rallied 
around that central idea, an idea broad enough to reach all the rami- 
fication of our whole institutions. 



THE DEMOCRACY. 

The Democratic party nowhere raises any great political ques- 
tions, they only want to get into power. — Campaign Speech in 1873. 



*7 

I affirm, and I believe I do not misrepresent the great Demo- 
cratic party, that in the last sixteen years they have not advanced one great 
national idea that is not to-day exploded and as dead as Julius Caesar. 

Every triumph that the Republican party has achieved in the 
last twelve years has been grumblingly and hesitatingly adopted by 
the Democratic party about five years after it was done. There is 
not an element of power, of strength, of manhood or decency in that 
party to-day that they did not borrow from us. — Campaign Speech, i8ji. 

Often the blunders and faults of the Republican party have 
been condoned by the people because of the violent reactionary and 
disloyal spirit of the Democracy. 

The reason there is no great political conflict this fall is because 
each party is firing at a mark, each in its own way — the Democratic 
party firing to the rear ; the Republican party to the front. 

— Campaign Speech, 1S73. 

In short, the Democratic party has sounded the recall, has 
returned from its departure, has re-crossed the river, has burned the 
bridges it constructed last year, and has encamped again in the grave- 
yard of the past. The tramp of its footstep echoes hollow from the 
dead beneath. — Ibid. 

I walk across that Democratic camping-ground as in a graveyard. 
Under my feet resound the hollow echoes of the dead. There lies 
Slavery, a black marble column at the head of its grave, on which I 
read: "Died in the flames of civil war; loved in its life; lamented at 
its death; followed to its bier by its only mourner, the Democratic 
party, but dead." And here is a double grave: "Sacred to the 
memory of Squatter Sovereignty. Died in the campaign of i860. 
On the reverse side : " Sacred to the memory of the Dred Scott- 
Breckinridge doctrine. Both dead at the hands of Abraham Lincoln." 
And here is a monument of brimstone : " Sacred to the memory of the 
Rebellion; the war against it a failure; Tilden ct Vallandigham 
feccrunt, A. D. 1864. Died on the field of battle ; shot to death by 
the million guns of the Republic." The doctrine of Secession, of State 
Sovereignty, dead. Expired in the flames of civil war amid the 
blazing rafters of the Confederacy, except that the modern .Eneas, 
fleeing out of the flames of that ruin, bears on his back another 
Anchises of State Sovereignty, and brings it here in the person of the 
honorable gentleman from Virginia. All else is dead. 

— Speech in Congress, iSj6. 



i8 

Parties have an organic life and spirit of their own — an individ- 
uality and character which outlive the men who compose them ; and 
the spirit and traditions of a party should be considered in determining 
their fitness for managing the affairs of the nation. — Ibid. 

Ovee this vast horizon of interests, North and South, above all 
party prejudices and personal wrong-doing, above our battle hosts and 
our victorious cause, above all that we hoped for and won, or you 
hoped for and lost, is the grand onward movement of the Republic to 
perpetuate its glory, to save Liberty alive, to preserve exact and equal 
justice to all, to protect and foster all these priceless principles until 
they shall have crystallized into the form of enduring law and become 
inwrought into the life and habits of our People. 

And until these great results are accomplished it is not safe to 
take one step backward. It is still more unsafe to trust interests of 
such measureless value in the hands of an organization whose 
members have never comprehended their epoch, have never been in 
sympathy with its great movements, who have resisted every step of 
its progress, and whose principal function has been 

To lie in cold obstruction 
across the pathway of the Nation. — Ibid. 

'Twas noon of night, and by his nickering lamp, 
That gloated o'er his dingy room and damp, 
With glassy eye and haggard face there sat 
A disappointed, worn-out Democrat ; 
His eloquence all wasted — plans all failed, 
His spurious coin fast to the counter nailed, 
Deception's self is now at length deceived, 
His lies political no more believed. 

— From a Poem in tlie Williams* Quarterly. 



CONGRESS. 

It is a safe and wise rule to follow in all legislation that whatever 
the people can do without legislation will be better done than by 
the intervention of the State and Nation. 

Congress has always been and must always be the theatre of 
contending opinions; the forum, where the opposing forces of political 
philosophy meet to measure their strength; where the public good 
must meet the assaults of local and sectional interests; in a word, the 
appointed place where the Nation seeks to utter its thought and reg- 
ister its will. 



19 

Congress must always be the exponent of the political character 
and culture of the people, and if the next centennial does not find us 
a great Nation with a great and worthy Congress, it will be because 
those who represent the enterprise, the culture and the morality of 
the Nation do not aid in controlling the political forces, which are 
employed to select the Men who shall occupy the great places of trust 
and power. — From a Century in Congress, in the Atlantic Monthly, 
August, 1S76. 

I admit most freely that Congress may regulate the act of open- 
ing the certificates and may regulate the work of counting, but it can- 
not push its power to regulate beyond the meaning of the words that 
describe the thing to be done. It cannot ingraft a Judiciary system 
upon the word " Open." It cannot evolve a Court-martial from the 
word " Count." It cannot erect a Star-chamber upon either or both of 
these words. It cannot plant the seeds of Despotism between the lines 
or words of the Constitution. — Speech on Counting the Electoral Vote. 

During the many calm years of the century, our pilots have 
grown careless of the course. The master of a vessel sailing down 
Lake Ontario, has the whole breadth of that beautiful inland sea for 
his pathway. But when his ship arrives at the chute of the Lachine, 
there is but one pathway of safety. With a steady hand, a clear eye 
and a brave heart, he points his prow to the well-fixed landmarks on 
the shore, and with death on either hand, makes the plunge and 
shoots the rapids in safety. We too are approaching the narrows, and 
we hear the roar of the angry waters below and the muttering of the 
sullen thunder overhead. Unterrified by breakers or tempest, let us 
steer our course by the Constitution of our Fathers, and we shall 
neither sink in the rapids, nor compel our children to shoot Niagara 
and perish in the whirlpool. — Ibid. 

When you tell me that civil war is threatened by any party or 
State in this Republic, you have given me a supreme reason why an 
American Congress should refuse with unutterable scorn, to listen to 
those who threaten or do any act whatever under the coercion of 
threats by any power on earth. With all my soul I despise your 
threat of civil war, come from what quarter or party it may. Brave 
men, certainly a brave nation, will do nothing under compulsion. We 
are entrusted with the work of obeying and defending the Constitu- 
tion. I will not be deterred from obeying it because somebody 
threatens to destroy it. I dismiss all that class of motives as unwor- 
thy of Americans. — Ibid. 



20 

GOVERNMENT. 

A government made for the kingdom of Lilliput might fail to 
handle the forces of Brobdignag. 

A government is an artificial giant, and the power that moves it 
is Money — money raised by taxation and distributed to the various 
parts of the body politic, according to the discretion of the Legislative 
power. 

We are accustomed to hear it said that the great powers of gov- 
ernment in this country are divided into two classes ; National powers 
and State powers. That is an incomplete classification. Our Fathers 
carefully divided all governmental powers into three classes; one 
they gave to the States, another to the Nation ; but the third great 
class, comprising the most precious of all powers, they refused to con- 
fer on the State or Nation, but reserved to themselves. This third 
class of powers has been almost uniformly overlooked by men who 
have written and discussed the American system. 



REVENUE. 

Revenue is not the friction of a government, but rather its mo- 
tive power. 

The expenditure of revenue forms the grand level from which all 
heights and depths of Legislative action are measured. 

There is scarcely a conceivable form of corruption or public 
wrong that does not at last present itself at the cashier's desk and de- 
mand money. The Legislature, therefore, that stands at the cashier's 
desk and watches with its Argus eyes the demands for payment over 
the counter is most certain to see all the forms of public rascality. 

A steady and constant Revenue drawn from sources that repre- 
sent the prosperity of the nation — a Revenue that grows with the 
growth of national wealth and is so adjusted to the expenditures that 
a constant and considerable surplus is annually left in the Treasury 
above all the necessary current demands, a surplus that keeps the 
Treasury strong, that holds it above the fear of sudden panic, that 
makes it impregnable against all private combinations, that makes it a 
terror to all stockjobbing and gold gambling — this is financial health. 



21 

FINANCE AND THE PUBLIC CREDIT. 

An uncertain currency that goes up and down, hits the Laborer, 
and hits him hard. It helps him last and hurts him first. 

That man makes a vital mistake who judges truth in relation to 
financial affairs from the changing phases of public opinion. He might 
as well stand on the shore of the Bay of Fundy, and from the ebb 
and flow of a single tide attempt to determine the general level of the 
sea, as to stand upon this floor, and from the current of public opinion 
on any one debate, judge of the general level of the public mind. It 
is only when long spaces along the shore of the sea are taken into 
account that the grand level is found from which the heights and 
depths are measured. And it is only when long spaces of time are 
considered that we find at last that level of public opinion which we 
call the general judgment of mankind. 

An uncertain and fluctuating standard is an evil whose magnitude 
is too vast for measurement. 

The Gold Exchange and the Gold Clearing-House, of New 
York, will be remembered in history as the Germans remember the 
robber castles of the Rhine, whence brigand chiefs levied black-mail 
upon every passer-by. 

Successful resumption will greatly aid in bringing into the 
murky sky of our politics, what the Signal Service people call "clear- 
ing weather." 

Bad faith on the part of an individual, a city, or even a State, is 
a small evil in comparison with the calamities which follow bad faith 
on the part of a sovereign government. 

In the complex and delicately-adjusted relations of modern 
Society, confidence in promises lawfully made is the life-blood of trade 
and commerce. It is the vital air Labor breathes. It is the light 
which shines on the pathway of prosperity. 

An act of bad faith on the part of a State or municipal corpora- 
tion, like poison in the blood, will transmit its curse to succeeding 
generations. 

We are bound by three great reasons to maintain the resumption 
of specie payments : First, because the sanctity of the public faith 
requires it; second, because the material prosperity of the country 



22 

demands it ; and third, because our future prosperity insists that agi- 
tation shall cease, and that the Country shall find a safe and perma- 
nent basis of financial peace. 

The men of 1862 knew the dangers from sad experience in our 
history ; and, like Ulysses, lashed themselves to the mast of public 
credit when they embarked upon the stormy and boisterous sea of 
inflated paper money, that they might not be beguiled by the siren- 
song that would be sung to them when they were afloat on the wild 
waves. 

Let the wild swarm of financial literature that has sprung into life 
within the last twelve years witness how widely and how far we have 
drifted. We have lost our old moorings, have thrown overboard our 
old compass ; we sail by alien stars looking not for the haven, but 
are afloat on a harborless sea. 

Let us have equality of dollars before the law, so that the trinity 
of our political creed shall be equal States, equal Men and equal Dol- 
lars throughout the Union. When these three are realized we shall 
have achieved the complete pacification of our country. 



ST A TESMANSHIP. 

Satesmanship consists rather in removing causes than in pun- 
ishing or evading results. Statistical science is indispensable to 
modern statesmanship. In Legislation as in physical science, it is 
be^innine to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only 
by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statutes 
not only the National will, but also those great laws of social life re- 
vealed by statistics. 



STATES RIGHTS. 

No more beautiful thought was embodied in the structure of our 
Republic than this : that our Fathers did so distribute the powers of 
government that no one power should be able to swallow, absorb or 
destroy the others. 

1 When States Rights run mad, put on the form of Secession and 

attempted to drag the states out of the Union we saw the grand lesson 
taught in all the battles of the late war that a state could no more be 
hurled from the Union without ruin to the nation than could a planet 
be thrown from its orbit without dragging after it to chaos and ruin 
the whole solar universe 



23 



Nothing more aptly describes the character of our Republic than 
the solar system, launched into space by the hand of the Creator 
where the central sun is the great power around which revolve all the 
planets in their appointed orbits. But while the sun holds in the 
, grasp of its attractive power the whole system and imparts its light 
and heat to all, yet each individual planet is under the sway of laws 
peculiar to itself 






Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe — Human or 
Divine. A law is no law without coercion behind it. 



We shall never know why Slavery dies so hard in this Republic and 
in this hall until we know why sin is long-lived and Satan is immortal. 

— Speech in Congress in iS6j. 



Secession is the Tocsin of eternal war. 



WAR. 

The reply to war is not Words but Swords. 

Battles are never the end of war ; for the Dead must be buried 
and the cost of the Conflict must be paid. 

Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no 
ideas behind it is simply brutality. 

To him a Battle was neither an earthquake, nor a volcano, nor a 
chaos of brave men and frantic horses involved in vast explosions of 
gunpowder. It was rather a calm rational combination of Force 
against Force. — Oration on Geo. H. Thomas. 

After the fire and blood of the battle-fields have disappeared, 
nowhere does War show its destroying power so certainly and so 
relentlessly as in the columns which represent the taxes and expendi- 
tures of the nation. 



24 

THE WAR OF THE REBELLION. 

If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of 
fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, 
and whose Death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. 

— Decoration Day Oration, iS63 

It will not do to speak of the gigantic revolution through which we 
have lately passed as a thing to be adjusted and settled by a change 
in administration. It was cyclical, epochal, century-wide, and to be 
studied in its broad and grand perspective, a revolution of even wider 
scope, so far as time is concerned, than the Revolution of 1776. 

In such a revolution, men are like insects, that fret and toss in the 
storm, but are swept onward by the resistless movements of elements 
beyond their control. 

I speak of this revolution not to praise the men who aided it, or 
to censure the men who resisted it, but as a Force to be studied, as a 
Mandate to be obeyed. 

Those who carried the war for the Union and equal and universal 
Freedom to a victorious issue, can never safely relax their vigilance 
until the ideas for which they fought have become embodied in the 
endurincr forms o'f Individual and National life. 

O 

Peace from the shock of battle, the higher Peace of our streets, 
our homes, of our equal rights we must secure by making the conquer- 
ing ideas of the War everywhere dominant and permanent. 



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! will pick up a few straws here and there over the broad 

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« 

Speech at Cleveland, October 11, 1879. 



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